Xcylin: A Sci-Fi open-world voxel RPG [Updated][Greenlit :D]

WIP games, tools & toy projects
#121

Notch doesn’t work on the game anymore and considering the dev team is only a few strong, I think they are doing a fine job. Can you even imagine how hard it would be to make a mod API that works very well?

#122

Well yeah nothing is easy but also not impossible, the community managed to make one that sort of works. They are doing OK but IMO, it feels like nothing ever gets added to the game that makes it feel fresh, mostly internal code changes that is not immediately visible to the player.

I’ve not checked on it in the past year mind you.

#123

A few people vs. Thousands of developers in the community. Yeah, that’s a fair comparison.

If you haven’t checked the game out in a while then it’s not fair to criticize the developers who are working hard adding new features in often. The last year has pretty much been all new features. Now, I’m not a Minecraft lover, but I give credit where it is due, and the Mojang team is definitely doing good.

#124

Lol, fair nuff’. The last time I checked it they were adding horses, something done by mods for years.

Would be good if they took some of the most popular mods and incorporated them the actual game, nothing like buildcraft but small things like minimal and alike.

Anyway I came here to say my peace to my stupid reply before Lol, let’s not derail this thread anymore and agree that I suck :stuck_out_tongue:

#125

Lol, fair nuff’. The last time I checked it they were adding horses, something done by mods for years.

Would be good if they took some of the most popular mods and incorporated them the actual game, nothing like buildcraft but small things like minimal and alike.

Anyway I came here to say my peace to my stupid reply before Lol, let’s not derail this thread anymore and agree that I suck :stuck_out_tongue:

#126

Good god this is impressive.

I can’t wait to see what this looks like in the future.

#127

Good god this is impressive.

I can’t wait to see what this looks like in the future.

#128

Thanks ;D. I will soon post an update to show how it looks right now.

#129

Thanks ;D. I will soon post an update to show how it looks right now.

#130

First things first: I decided to release the game in alpha state on 1st of October 2014 (give or take a few days). It will be released on Xcylin’s website which (hopefully) will be finished until then: xcylin.com.

In the last couple of weeks I did a lot of work under the hood to prevent jittering and lagging. I found (after a lot of bug hunting) that the GC was responsible for it, when it did a full collection of the old gen space. After a lot of trial and error I came to the conclusion that my mesh builder was responsible for most of the GC’s time. It uses an octree internally and that octree is built using simple Java objects with references to each other. Obviously the GC is not happy when I have a huge tree in memory that is no longer reachable as it needs to check every object and go through the whole tree to find that the object is no longer used. But I found a way around that by linearizing the tree into a buffer and keeping the objects at the tree’s leaf in a simple collection. When the buffer is not used anymore, the GC can collect it in < 1 ms.

Next I wanted to make the drilling laser more realistic, and so it now induces energy into the blocks. This energy builds up until the block explodes. Here is a screenshot of how the energy build-up looks like in-game:

http://www.xcylin.com/promotion/screenshot047.png

And here what it looks like when they explode with the new particle system I added:

http://www.xcylin.com/promotion/screenshot053.png

As you know or might not know: in Xcylin you are stranded on the planet, because your starship crash landed on it. So I’m currently working on a special “world” where I can construct the wreck parts of the ship in-game and store them to disk, so that it can be placed randomly on the planet later. This “world” is called “construction world” and is a completely flat terrain where placeable parts can be built. Currently it looks like this:

http://www.xcylin.com/promotion/screenshot052.png

That’s it for now. I try to post more updates here on a regular basis. Stay tuned. :slight_smile:

#131

It’s kinda amazing that you can stay motivated on this over such a long time…
However, nice to see this project progressing! :slight_smile:

#132

Thanks. I figured I put way too much work into this project to not continue it. Also: I’d really love to play the game when it’s finished! ;D

#133

First things first: I decided to release the game in alpha state on 1st of October 2014 (give or take a few days). It will be released on Xcylin’s website which (hopefully) will be finished until then: xcylin.com.

In the last couple of weeks I did a lot of work under the hood to prevent jittering and lagging. I found (after a lot of bug hunting) that the GC was responsible for it, when it did a full collection of the old gen space. After a lot of trial and error I came to the conclusion that my mesh builder was responsible for most of the GC’s time. It uses an octree internally and that octree is built using simple Java objects with references to each other. Obviously the GC is not happy when I have a huge tree in memory that is no longer reachable as it needs to check every object and go through the whole tree to find that the object is no longer used. But I found a way around that by linearizing the tree into a buffer and keeping the objects at the tree’s leaf in a simple collection. When the buffer is not used anymore, the GC can collect it in < 1 ms.

Next I wanted to make the drilling laser more realistic, and so it now induces energy into the blocks. This energy builds up until the block explodes. Here is a screenshot of how the energy build-up looks like in-game:

http://www.xcylin.com/promotion/screenshot047.png

And here what it looks like when they explode with the new particle system I added:

http://www.xcylin.com/promotion/screenshot053.png

As you know or might not know: in Xcylin you are stranded on the planet, because your starship crash landed on it. So I’m currently working on a special “world” where I can construct the wreck parts of the ship in-game and store them to disk, so that it can be placed randomly on the planet later. This “world” is called “construction world” and is a completely flat terrain where placeable parts can be built. Currently it looks like this:

http://www.xcylin.com/promotion/screenshot052.png

That’s it for now. I try to post more updates here on a regular basis. Stay tuned. :slight_smile:

#134

It’s kinda amazing that you can stay motivated on this over such a long time…
However, nice to see this project progressing! :slight_smile:

#135

Thanks. I figured I put way too much work into this project to not continue it. Also: I’d really love to play the game when it’s finished! ;D

#136

Wow I thought this project burning out!

#137

Wow I thought this project burning out!

#138

Okay, I know first of october was yesterday, but I keep it as the guys from Blizzard: “It’s done when it’s done”. And there are a few things that need to be done before I can release it as alpha version.

But until now I added a lot of stuff and fixed a lot more stuff (also a very crucial jittering bug). For example I’ve been working on the world’s topology and wrote a special explorer software for that:

http://xcylin.com/screenshots/tech_screenshot001.png

in 3D this looks like this:

http://xcylin.com/screenshots/screenshot059.png

Also a lot of non visual stuff has been enhanced. For example, Xcylin is faster now than it ever was before. The sectors’ meshes now also use an octree structure to handle their mesh information, making it rocket fast to change terrain. Also a lot of refactoring was done to make the code more maintainable in the future.

And I found a very talented composer, David Levy to compose music for Xcylin. Here is the first track that will be used for the trailer:


http://xcylin.com/screenshots/sound_01.png

Next update will be in a few days with more screenshots! :slight_smile:

#139

Okay, I know first of october was yesterday, but I keep it as the guys from Blizzard: “It’s done when it’s done”. And there are a few things that need to be done before I can release it as alpha version.

But until now I added a lot of stuff and fixed a lot more stuff (also a very crucial jittering bug). For example I’ve been working on the world’s topology and wrote a special explorer software for that:

http://xcylin.com/screenshots/tech_screenshot001.png

in 3D this looks like this:

http://xcylin.com/screenshots/screenshot059.png

Also a lot of non visual stuff has been enhanced. For example, Xcylin is faster now than it ever was before. The sectors’ meshes now also use an octree structure to handle their mesh information, making it rocket fast to change terrain. Also a lot of refactoring was done to make the code more maintainable in the future.

And I found a very talented composer, David Levy to compose music for Xcylin. Here is the first track that will be used for the trailer:


http://xcylin.com/screenshots/sound_01.png

Next update will be in a few days with more screenshots! :slight_smile:

#140

Unlocked upon request :point: